Beyond the Bloodline

Chapter 449: Insight into Apotheosis

Jamie instantly closed the distance, appearing right beside Akari and swinging his sword straight towards her.

However, the Galaxy Sword’s blade was deflected by an invisible barrier, the rebound force pushing Jamie back slightly as cracks spread through empty space, before the full structure of the spherical cosmic energy barrier surrounding Akari’s body manifested into reality.

The energy of the law of fortification was then infused into its structure, repairing the cracks caused by Jamie’s sword in an instant.

Akari, her eyes cold, turned towards Jamie as she said, |You really think we wouldn’t have expected you to do that?|

Pointing her staff at him, she declared. |Prayer of Retribution.|

From the barrier surrounding her body, chains of causality energy with speared tips and spiked links burst out in dozens.

Jamie had already teleported away from her vicinity by the time those chains could even begin forming, but the moment they formed and shot out, they were already at his location, as though they had followed him, forcing him to click his tongue as he moved away to avoid the chains that came at him from every possible angle.

The glow in Jamie’s eyes intensified, cosmic energy erupting from his heart and out through his body as his personalised interpretation of ’space’ enveloped the Galaxy Sword, forming an additional layer over the blade.

In the blink of an eye, the first ten chains reaching his vicinity were shredded to pieces, and Jamie, activating his Third Concretization, formed a three-ringed crest of cosmic energy behind his head.

The full power of his Aspect Armament concentrated into his sword, making the blade’s obsidian hilt glow as it transformed into a snowflake-like guard of blue translucent light. That light flowed into the black mist of the blade, refining its edges, the image of the starry sky with planets and galaxies across the blade becoming more vivid as two blue diamonds extended from the new guard, all radiating powerful cosmic energy.

The transformation of his weapon took only an instant, and within that instant, several hundred new chains had already shot towards Jamie’s body, aiming to bind him from all sides.

In response, he simply swung the Galaxy Sword once, and they were shredded apart in the dozens.

Akari unleashed more chains of causality, cracks in reality forming around Jamie as the chains manifested from those cracks and shot towards him.

Before they could reach him, Jamie’s left hand glowed with cosmic energy, and he swiped his hand through the space around him, carving out everything within it, including the chains.

Just as he carved out that space, Akari appeared at his left side, her foot breaking through the multi-layered spatial barrier Jamie normally maintained over his body and stomping onto his left shoulder, while her staff pointed straight towards his head, glowing with powerful cosmic energy.

A cross-shaped light erupted from the staff’s tip, and in the same instant, Jamie’s right hand swung the Galaxy Sword upward toward Akari’s body, aimed directly at the five tails covering the left side of her body, each one coated in dense cosmic energy.

What followed was a space-rupturing blast of power that sent Jamie flying through space and down into the Dead Zone.

He crashed straight into the Dead Zone with immense force, blasting a vast void through its grey fog from top to bottom as he burst out beneath the region of space the Dead Zone occupied.

When the mass of black and white energy engulfing his body faded away, Akari, still in the same position, looked toward the unscathed Jamie and the cut-out hole in the Dead Zone, then muttered, |Are you looking down on us, Westley?|

The left side of the fortification law energy barrier surrounding her body was broken open, leaving a gaping hole, and two of her tails had been completely severed, blood spilling out continuously.

However, Akari acted as though she couldn’t feel the pain of losing two tails, as well as the power contained within them, as she glared directly at Jamie.

Akari had gone in for that exchange fully intending to sacrifice five of her nine tails to block Jamie’s retaliatory strike, and yet only two had been severed.

This wasn’t because Akari’s defences were stronger than expected, but because Jamie had used less power than he normally would in that situation.

His attack still cut through multiple dimensions and Akari’s tails as well, which occupied space across several dimensions, but only two of them had been severed, rather than the five Akari had anticipated from an attack released by Jamie using his Aspect Armament.

Jamie looked up at her, clicking his tongue as he reconstructed his multi-layered barriers, and as he did this, the Galaxy Sword’s voice echoed in his mind.

[Master, you can’t hold back against her.]

Jamie frowned at those words, his grip on the sword tightening as the veins in his arms bulged.

Akari lightly shook her staff, and reality warped. The blood from her severed tails drifting through space vanished along with the tails themselves, and her body became whole again.

Seeing how easily she undid the effect of her tails being severed, Akari looked back at Jamie and confirmed her earlier words.

|You really are looking down on us.|

Her body erupted with cosmic energy the moment she spoke, powerful waves of force exerting immense pressure on everything within the Dead Zone and across billions of light-years of surrounding space.

Pointing her staff directly at Jamie, she spoke.

|The Shrine Priestess’s Prayer.|

Feeling the power of Akari’s Dictum activate, Jamie exhaled and let go of the Galaxy Sword.

[Master, are you sure?] The sword asked.

’Yes.’

The power of Jamie’s Aspect Armament flowed out of the Galaxy Sword and back into his body, condensing around both arms, a layer of dark blue void energy swirling around them and concentrating at his fingers where his nails sharpened into claws.

’I don’t want to accidentally kill her.’

With those words, Jamie’s slit pupils glowed, and instantly millions of chains of causality, each with spiked tips, emerged from the spherical shell around Akari’s body, instantly reaching Jamie’s position.

Before any of the chains could make contact, Jamie reached out with his left hand and grabbed space itself like fabric, dragging it downward and shrinking the distance between him and Akari in a split second.

His right hand shot forward, claws piercing into the wave of chains in front of him, shattering them all and colliding with the barrier of energy around Akari’s body.

Unlike before when he used the Galaxy Sword, the barrier didn’t crack instantly as powerful brown and grey law energies sparked like lightning, resisting Jamie’s hands trying to pierce through.

Akari pointed her staff at Jamie, releasing more cosmic energy to reinforce the barrier, and Jamie instantly thrust his left hand forward as well. His claws collided with the barrier, and the void energy around both hands caused cracks to spread across it as his fingers pierced deeper, and then, with full force he pulled his hands apart, ripping the barrier open like a pair of curtains.

Jamie’s hands reached toward Akari, but she vanished instantly, replaced by a small paper figure bearing her likeness.

However, Jamie didn’t stop moving forward, ignoring Akari’s staff, which was already aimed at the back of his head, as he muttered,

|Third Privilege: Reality.|

Instantly, the fabric of reality warped, and Akari was replaced again by her paper doll, her body returned to the position she had swapped from.

Jamie grabbed her with his left hand, unleashing a burst of cosmic energy that shattered the Aspect Armament barriers over her skin, while his right hand moved to her neck and grabbed her in a chokehold.

His left hand flashed to her wrist, twisting it and forcing her staff from her grip, then he hit the staff with his elbow and expelled it from the universe’s space-time continuum.

Jamie reached out with his left hand and grabbed the cosmic crest behind Akari’s head, the void energy around his hands bleeding into the crest and causing it to crack, drawing a groan of pain from her as her tails, which had been shooting toward him with their tips coated in dense cosmic energy, froze mid-motion.

"You’re too heated right now, Akari," he said. "You need to cool off."

Cosmic energy began wrapping around Akari’s body as Jamie tried to warp away to another location, however, Akari’s hands suddenly shot forward and grabbed his right arm with enough force to crack his bones, her claws sinking deep into his skin and piercing through to the bone.

Glaring at him with bloodshot eyes, she said, |Didn’t we tell you before that this arrogance of yours will be your downfall?|

The cosmic crest behind her head glowed with light, and all her tails coiled around Jamie glowed with the power of the law—no, the Concept of Causality.

Jamie’s eyes widened, and he instantly tried to release her neck and break free from the grip of her tails, but the power of the Concept of Causality drawn from the Eternal who governed it through Akari’s contract with him immobilized Jamie for a second, just long enough for her to activate her Fourth Concretization.

|You’re not the only one who’s gained insight into Apotheosis.|

|!|

With those words, Akari unleashed all of her internal cosmic energy, engulfing Jamie within a small world of her creation.

From the outside, it appeared as an orb of cosmic creation and causality energy wrapping around both of them, gradually shrinking until it vanished from space entirely, along with all traces of Jamie and Akari’s presences across the universe.